Intel Motherboards : Install windows 7 on 960 evo

Author: parsec
Subject: Install windows 7 on 960 evo
Posted: 17 Jan 2017 at 10:36am

nick80gr wrote: Hi, i have a H170 perfomance motherboard and a m2 ssd 960 evo samsung. I try to install windows 7 64 bit but i can't make it. I see the disk on bios but in the step that need to choose the disk in order to install windows i can't find it. What need to do in order to fix it ? Need to install a driver ?

Yes, you must install an NVMe driver. The 960 EVO is an NVMe SSD, a new and different storage protocol than SATA.

Windows 7 does not have a built in NMVe driver in its installation program, which is why the 960 EVO is not found.

Samsung provides an NVMe driver on the information page of the 960 EVO. But it is not in the correct format for use with a Windows installation. The NVMe driver files have been extracted from the Samsung NVMe driver installation program, which normally can only be used once Windows is installed. There is a link to a website where you can download that driver at the end of this post.

You are trying to do two difficult things at the same time, difficult because you are using Windows 7. Windows 8.1 and 10 do not have these problems.

First there is the problem with no USB 3.0 driver, and second no NVMe driver.

Below is a link to a guide for installing Windows 7 on an Intel 100 series chipset board (like you have), using an NVMe SSD as the Windows drive. If you need to use this guide, you must be careful to do every step perfectly. The link to the NVMe driver you can load during the Windows 7 installation is in the guide:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/guide-installing-windows-7-on-an-nvme-ssd-from-a-usb-3-0-thumbdrive.783921/

A direct link to a Samsung NVMe driver you can use with a Windows 7 installation can be found on the page below. Find the Samsung NVMe Drivers section, you want the Win 7 "pure" 64 bit driver:

http://www.win-raid.com/t29f25-Recommended-AHCI-RAID-and-NVMe-Drivers.html